When accessing a patient""s spinal region or intervertebral spaces during various surgical procedures, such as when performing a diskectomy, it is typically necessary to remove portions of various spinal bones to provide access to the operative site. Traditionally, the portions of the various spinal bones which are removed when accessing the patient""s spinal region or intervertebral space are simply flushed away from the operative site and discarded.
This represents a waste of material as bone tissue can be used in various medical procedures. For example, when inserting intervertebral implants in a patient""s intervertebral space, it is often desirable to insert bone allograft material into passages in the implant since such bone allograft material typically promotes bone ingrowth through the implant, resulting in bone fusion.
The present invention provides systems for recovering particles of bone which have been cut or ground away from an operative site by an abrading or cutting instrument and have been flushed from the operative site in a fluid slurry suspension. An advantage of the present invention is that it facilitates recovery of bone particles such that these recovered particles can then be used in other surgical procedures, for example, being compacted into the passageways in an intervertebral implant, to promote intervertebral bone growth.
Operating as a self-contained system, the present invention can be used to provide a rapid recovery of bone particles in real time, such that the bone particles removed and recovered by the present invention can be implanted back into the same patient during the surgical procedure (preferably after cleaning, as required). By recovering bone material and then implanting that same recovered bone material into the same patient, the need to rely on bone allograft transplants from other patients is reduced, thereby avoiding tissue rejection problems.
In one preferred aspect, the present invention provides systems for recovering bone material by passing a fluid slurry of bone particles through a filter (which may optionally spin centrifugally) or over a spill-separation partition which separates two different reservoirs.
In additional aspects, the present invention further comprises a device or devices for removing the bone slurry from the patient, wherein such device or devices may optionally comprise irrigation and fluid suctioning systems as well as systems for grinding, cutting, shaving or abrading bone tissue so as to yield small particles of bone tissue material, (which are then removed from the patient in a slurry, and are later recovered in accordance with the present invention). In one preferred aspect, a single multi-purpose device may optionally by used to provide the irrigation, suction and the grinding, cutting, shaving, or abrading necessary to yield the bone particles which are then carried into the spill-separation or filtering recovery portion of the system.
In various aspects of the invention, the present system can be operated in an xe2x80x9copenxe2x80x9d manner in which external irrigation fluid is supplied to the system, and waste fluid is expelled by the system. Alternatively, the present system can also be operated in a xe2x80x9cclosedxe2x80x9d manner in which fluid is re-circulated such that the irrigation fluid is supplied from the outlet of the bone particle separation/filtration portion of the system (i.e.: after the bone articles have been removed from the slurry, the resulting substantially purified liquid is then used for irrigation, picking up more bone particles at the operative site, and delivering these particles in a slurry into the bone particle recovery portion of the system.